Always make two batches of crust. Once you have all the ingredients at hand, all the equipment out on the counter, and you’ve dirtied up your kitchen, making the second batch is only a fraction of the work of the first one. Freeze the second crust.^[1]

Makes one 9-inch double-crust, or two single 9-inch crusts

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I’d been making mediocre pie crusts for years, using a food processor, because that’s, you know, so dope. I’m not sure where I would go wrong, but I was always disappointed. One day I was away from home, on vacation, and I wanted to make a pie. Yeah, because that’s what I like to do when I’m on vacation. Anyway, I didn’t have access to a food processor or a rolling pin, but I did have access to a pastry cutter^[2] and a wine bottle. And that crust kicked ass! To hell with that processor!

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2¼ cups plus 2 Tbs all-purpose flour
2 Tbs cornstarch
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 Tbs plus 1½ tsp fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup cold water
Ice
2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1. Sift the flour, cornstarch, salt, and sugar into a large mixing bowl. Then, whisk for a couple hundred strokes. Set aside. Combine the lemon juice with the water. Add a few cubes of ice and set aside. 2. Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour mixture. Keep cutting until the flour becomes uniformly moistened and there no longer appear to be any obvious lumps of butter. Continue cutting until your cuts start to produce clumps of semi-coherent dough. It’s hard; I know. But keep your mind focused on that complete moron you have for a boss, and then grind, grind, grind that mixture against the side of the bowl. 3. Sprinkle 3 or 4 Tbs of the water mixture over the dough. Use your hands to work the water into the dough. You have to work firmly and decisively, but it shouldn’t take more than a minute for the dough to come together. If it doesn’t come together, add more of the water mixture. (Many factors can influence the amount of water that flour will absorb. It’s easier to add more than to correct for too much.) 4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide it in half and form each half into a thick disk. Wrap the disks tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for a minimum of two hours or up to two days. The disks can be frozen at this point, for God knows how long … months, I suppose. If you’re going to do that, give the disks a second layer of wrapping, using aluminum foil. Once thawed, they’ll be indistinguishable from freshly-made dough.

I’ll freely admit, that Step 3 is kind of tricky. It’s hard to know if your dough is coming together unless you know what a good dough looks and feels like. If you know someone who makes a good pie crust, get with them and make one together. In the meantime, here are some revelations I’ve had:

You’re often instructed to avoid overworking the dough. However, that does not mean that you need to handle it gently. You need to manhandle it to a degree, actually. “Don’t overwork it” has to do with duration, not force. Once you’ve added the water, work it in firmly – but just until it reaches the threshold of coming together and then stop. This takes experience.

How do you know when you’ve reached that threshold? When you’re forming the dough into disks, it might crumble and should crack at the edges, but you should be able to rejoin any crumbs to the dough mass easily, and the dough should be able to maintain its integrity. If you have to really work at it, and the dough just keeps falling apart, it’s too dry. If, on the other hand, the dough feels sticky, it’s too wet. As the dough rests in the fridge, the liquid will become more evenly distributed, and the dough will be more homogenized and coherent. You should be able to roll it out with minimal edge-cracking and very little – if any – stickiness. Again, this takes experience.

5. Roll out one of your dough disks so that it’s about 12 inches in diameter. Fit it into a 9-inch glass pie plate and trim it to about ½-inch overhang. This is where a Silpat can come in handy. If you lightly flour it, you can roll out the dough without having to flip it. The dough will stick to the Silpat just enough so that you can invert the Silpat onto the pie plate, re-position it so that the crust is centered, and peel the Silpat away. Once you’ve got the pie in the place, pop it into the fridge. If you’re making a double-crust, re-use the Silpat to roll out a second disk of dough to a 12-inch diameter. Leave the crust on the Silpat, put the whole thing on a cookie sheet, and pop it in the fridge. Chill for about 30 minutes.

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Pie Crust Notes:

This is a pastry cutter